Vol. II. Issue. III September 2011 - The Criterion: An International ...

www.the-criterion.com The Criterion: An International Journal in English ISSN 0976-8165
You Say Utopia; I Say Dystopia: From Idealism to Nihilism in Utopias
Carlos Hiraldo
The article argues for a return to a philosophical and political understanding of utopias
that includes intentional visions of the better future and for a move away from understanding the
term, like some contemporary academics do, as nothing more than a critique of present social
conditions and a vague hope for a better future. The article claims that this shift in intellectual
perspective is crucial for understanding why attempts to implement utopian visions will produce
dystopian results. It sites as examples of dystopian utopias Kurtz’s commercial station in Joseph
Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, small “intentional communities,” and the Soviet Union under
Stalinism. It compares and contrasts Joseph Stalin with Conrad’s Kurtz, employing literary
analysis to historical narratives on Stalinism and applying a historical analysis to Conrad’s
fiction, in order to unearth and highlight the nihilism within utopian visions.
It’s safe to say that most human beings hope for a better future for themselves and for
their community, however broadly or narrowly they define the latter and however general or
specific the acts of hoping become. It’s further safe to claim that very few people engage in
envisioning utopias whether by describing these in fictional or nonfictional writings, or by
actively supporting experimental communities. Yet, works of utopian studies have stretched the
definition of the term to the point where it does not only refer to a fairly concrete description of
an ideal society and/or an active engagement in establishing such a society, but it can also be
used interchangeably with a feeling of hope. In “The Ambiguous Necessity of Utopia,” Bill
Ashcroft claims that “for most contemporary utopian theory utopia is no longer a place but the
spirit of hope itself, the essence of desire for a better world” (8). Equating utopia with hope
incongruously makes just about everyone a utopian. The reduction of utopia to one of its
elements, that of hope, may have a theoretical rationale and its usefulness for theoreticians, but
for practical purposes it obfuscates a term that in popular understanding has clear delineations.
Yet, Lisa Garforth’s claims in "“No Intentions? Utopian Theory after the Future” that in its
popular understanding the term utopia “remains trapped between the twin poles of, on the one
hand, its dismissive association with impractical, fantastical and totalitarian schemes for social
improvement and, on the other, its unreflexive use as shorthand for positive or hopeful
orientations to the future, however vague and unformed” (5). Her assertion that when used
dismissively in popular parlance the term becomes linked to “impractical” and “totalitarian
schemes for social improvement” implies that the popular notion of utopia is really much more
rigorous than a “vague and unformed” “hopeful orientation.”
The popular understanding of utopia is in many ways more precise than its academic
permutation, and goes back to works like Thomas More’s Utopia (1516) and William Morris’
News from Nowhere (1890). In popular parlance, utopia connotes a future ideal society that
critiques the present by stretching through an act of imagination, whether in literary or essay
form, or through some other artistic medium, present conceptions of justice and egalitarianism
beyond what is deemed possible by contemporaneous mores. Though sharing some similar
elements with contemporary academic definitions of the term, this is an understanding of utopia
that grounds the concept in something beyond ephemeral hope or as Garforth puts it “the
moment at which an encounter with a piece of music or a work of art stimulates the apprehension
of and yearning for a better way of being” (8). This analogy basically equates utopia with
daydreaming.
Vol. II. Issue. III 43 September 2011